Good observations. Go4Go collection now has thousands of more Korean games covering late 1980's and the whole 1990's. Still a work in progress, but this already has significant impact to the early ratings.

Could you consider adding some of the games of Master/Alpha Go to go4go.net, I believe that this would help us to understand how much stronger it is to human now.

These are blitz games, and some opponent's names are not fully confirmed, but I understand that go4go.net also includes internet-based games, the Japan national team training games for example, so I think it makes sense to add those Alpha Go's games.

I actually want to make a poll on whether ranking (not just goratings) should include bots.I think they're strong enough to have their own ranking, just like chess AI.But if it'll continue to be in human list, just make sure it doesn't mess up human ranking order, as bot's progression is very different from human.

I actually want to make a poll on whether ranking (not just goratings) should include bots.I think they're strong enough to have their own ranking, just like chess AI.But if it'll continue to be in human list, just make sure it doesn't mess up human ranking order, as bot's progression is very different from human.

I will probably remove them from goratings, anyway, because the statistical model I use does not fit the way their strength may changes in time.

I actually want to make a poll on whether ranking (not just goratings) should include bots.I think they're strong enough to have their own ranking, just like chess AI.But if it'll continue to be in human list, just make sure it doesn't mess up human ranking order, as bot's progression is very different from human.

I will probably remove them from goratings, anyway, because the statistical model I use does not fit the way their strength may changes in time.

A little update: Right now AlphaGo and DeepZenGo is removed from the list. So we're back to human only list again. Which is very good in my opinion.Remi, do you plan to have a new model that human and bot can co-exist?

A little update: Right now AlphaGo and DeepZenGo is removed from the list. So we're back to human only list again. Which is very good in my opinion.Remi, do you plan to have a new model that human and bot can co-exist?

No. It is not really possible to find a statistical model of computer strength variation in time, anyway. Each new version should be considered a different player.

1. I don't like the new spelling, even though it's more accurate (like Lee Sedol to Yi Se-tol and changing order from Iyama Yuta to Yuta Iyama) When I search for Lee Hajin I found nothing, because she change to Yi Ha-chin.2. Flag should be the nation in which that person receive professional graduation from, not his/her nationality. This way you don't have to update every time pro move out of his/her origin country.3. Is data enough for expanding historical rating backward further from 1980 to 1970?

1. I don't like the new spelling, even though it's more accurate (like Lee Sedol to Yi Se-tol and changing order from Iyama Yuta to Yuta Iyama) When I search for Lee Hajin I found nothing, because she change to Yi Ha-chin.

Revised Romanization is not expected to be adopted as the official romanization of Korean family names, and few people have voluntarily adopted it. According to a 2009 study by the National Institute of the Korean Language based on 63,351 applications for South Korean passports in 2007, for each of the three most common surnames Kim (김), Lee (이), and Park (박), less than 2% of applicants asked for their surname to be romanized in their passport by using the respective Revised Romanization spelling Gim, I, or Bak.[3] Given names and commercial names are encouraged to change, but it is not required.

My wife's maiden name is Lee, and she still spells it that way. I don't think it's useful to force someone's name to be spelled in a way that they don't want it to be spelled.

Thanks for your feedback about the new version of goratings. This version uses data from https://db.u-go.net/ to display player names in English, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.

go4go.net only provides English and Chinese names. I might go back to using go4go.net's spelling for English and Chinese if visitors prefer it. I noticed a few problems, like the Chinese name of Yoshio Ishida.

The data at https://db.u-go.net/ is incomplete, as you can see by looking at the Korean and Japanese versions of goratings. Your contribution is welcome.

Maybe I should use the Chinese writing by default in the Japanese page, too.

I updated goratings.org today. I reversed to using go4go's writing for English and Chinese. Chinese players are written in Chinese by default in the Japanese list, and the Japanese text is translated. Many Japanese and Korean writings are missing:

I'm glad Lee Sedol is back to that spelling instead of Yi Se-tol or whatever it was (I tried converting Sensei's Library some time ago but gave up due to pushback). I know JF may say those are more technically correct or accurate to the Korean pronunciation, but Lee Sedol is how he is, and presumably wants, to be known in the West given that's the romanization used in his books, the AlphaGo match, Go 9 dan server (which he was involved with), his facebook page etc. And as Kirby quoted, the vast majority of Koreans with his family name still call themselves Lee.

I'm glad Lee Sedol is back to that spelling instead of Yi Se-tol or whatever it was (I tried converting Sensei's Library some time ago but gave up due to pushback). I know JF may say those are more technically correct or accurate to the Korean pronunciation, but Lee Sedol is how he is, and presumably wants, to be known in the West given that's the romanization used in his books, the AlphaGo match, Go 9 dan server (which he was involved with), his facebook page etc. And as Kirby quoted, the vast majority of Koreans with his family name still call themselves Lee.

Your misrepresentation is just encouraging kɜbi (no r for me - see also below -) to be silly again. I don't think I've ever said any form was more "technically correct" - I don't even know what that means here. "Accurate" is inaccurate. And your implication I was doing the "pushback" on SL is, I hope, just carelessness.

What I did say at one time was that McR romanisation was used in the GoGoD database for several very good reasons, one of which was that it made conversion to the hangeul form possible, while other popular romanisations didn't. That mattered then because Unicode wasn't available for most of us. It is now, so that reason has lost force. There have also been interventions by the Korean government since then. But none of that necessarily justifies a change in GoGoD practice.

A good part of the reason for not changing at GoGoD is that we do not impose any one version of a name - we offer all the sensible alternatives. The current Onomasticon (over 4,000 entries) offers each name in English, kana, pinyin, hangeul, simplified Chinese characters, Japanese characters and traditional characters. Furthermore, variant characters are shown and any variant English versions (such as Lee Sedol) are also listed. You make your own choice. I have made my own choice for the GoGoD database. The most important criterion has been consistency.

To go through (and reject) the reasons you list:

1. "the romanisation used in his books, the AlphaGo match, Go 9 dan server (which he was involved with), his facebook page etc" If we follow this logic, we would be saying e.g. Yuta Iyama, Yuhki Satoshi, Jun'ya Ohba for Japanese players who like to follow western practice (they also often favour the Japanese national romanisation rather than Hepburn, giving e.g. Tuda instead of Tsuda)). Of course some Americans already do say Kaiho Rin and so on. One problem comes when you deal with historical players (as GoGoD does heavily, of course) where there is no western practice. Are you going to say Sansa Honinbo and how would you handle Inoue Genan Inseki (or Gennan as many Japanese prefer)? And how do you rule on Fujisawa Shuko which the man himself so disliked? After all, it's on some books published on Japanese.

2. "And as Kirby quoted, the vast majority of Koreans with his family name still call themselves Lee." South Koreans - North Koreans prefer Ri. But this is a bit of an anomaly. There are some names where a particular westernisation does dominate but an awful lot more where variants battle for dominance. There are several pros with the surname Paek (White), but in English texts I have observed Paek, Baek, Back, Bak, Baik and Bek (there are other forms outside of go). If you add in variants of the given name, you get an explosion of forms. E.g. 9-dan Paek Seong-ho has appeared as Baek Sungho, Baek Seongho, Baek Soungho, Bak Soungho, Back Sungho, Paek Sungho. Another common example is Cheong/Jeong/Chung/Jung. And although Kim dominates, Gim appears to be making headway.

Even where a player's own preferences are known, it's problematical to follow them if consistency is prized. Historical (and some older people of more recent times) have never had, or wanted, a Romanised name of any form. There is no fixed pattern in modern usage to follow.

A minor problem comes with the name Pak, almost always romanised as Park. Which means many Americans pronounce it with a reflex r as in kɜrbi - though r is not correct in IPA, surely (and southern English make the vowel too long). Clearly it's problematical, therefore, to try to use pronunciation as a criterion.

The latest official romanisation is also of no help: it was designed for tourists and is ignored by the natives.

Chinese throws up problems too. Although the habit of putting the surname last (common when Hong Kong was the gateway to the west) seems to be dying out, there is still some variation with regard to splitting and capitalising given names (Nie Weiping/Wei Ping/WeiPing), and some Chinese think it's useful to take a western name for use in the west. The biggest issue, though, is with Taiwanese names. They tend to reject pinyin and use Wade-Giles, but often with idiosyncratic variations of their own, as in Korea. Do we accept that and used WG for Taiwanese players and pinyin for mainland players? (I don't, but couldn't really quibble if you did).

There are many more issues to do with names and no doubt things will happen in the near future that will change some of the current reasons for making choices. The GoGoD view therefore is to try to offer all the choices but to strive for consistency, not just internally but also with legacy items, when making its own choice, as in the GoGoD database.

I think John's stance, as he's written it here, is quite reasonable. Particularly, it's nice to offer multiple choices for a name when there are multiple ways to represent a character.

The only part I'd like to add to is this:

Quote:

Even where a player's own preferences are known, it's problematical to follow them if consistency is prized.

This statement is true, and for historical players for which no preference is known, consistency certainly makes things simpler.

However, I think it's still polite to use known preferences, even if it's inconsistent. A friend of mine is named "Jon" and pronounces his name the same way I assume "John" pronounces his name. But I don't persist in referring to JF as "Jon", since that's not how he spells his name. Admittedly, "John" is already a western name, and is probably JF's official name. That's not the case for non-Western names that are converted into an English format.

But I think the point remains that John's preference toward spelling his name overrides a universal standard of spelling all Johns as "Jon" (or vice-versa).

In the same way, if I know a guy that wants to spell his last name "Yi", and another guy that wants to spell his last name "Lee", or yet another guy that wants to spell his name "Ri", I have no problem respecting this, even though it's not consistent.

For the unique case of a public database like GoGoD, consistency is useful, since there may be many that don't know that Lee Sedol wants to spell his name "Lee Sedol".

For that reason, I think it's a good choice for GoGoD to offer multiple spellings for a name. Include preferred names, as well as names that are more consistent, and you can satisfy on all fronts.

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